The Reform of the Unions

Abstract

If employers and the state have undervalued labour, at least trade unions have tried to oppose this process. They have done this through the traditional methods of collective bargaining and political lobbying and agitation. In recent years these efforts have continued, but in the face of three major challenges to the trade union movment. Firstly, the state has passed laws which have been put forward as reforming the unions, but which were aimed principally at weakening the movement’s ability to use strikes and other actions to achieve wage advances and other economic objectives, but also at increasing the individual rights of trade unionists with respect to union discipline. Secondly, mass unemployment, which produced a major drop in membership, compelled the movement to contemplate reforming itself, and led to anxious internal debates about the direction of reform (the ‘new realism’ debate). Thirdly, the trade union movement, in the 1970s as well as in the 1980s, found itself challenged by sections of its own membership as being based on sectarianism — this charge was made especially by women and ethnic minorities.